


Sleep When You're Dead

by jukeboxhound



Series: Bezoars & Broomsticks [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Empath!Patton, Gen, Hellenic polytheist!Roman, Humor, Magic, Spiritworker!Virgil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 06:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jukeboxhound/pseuds/jukeboxhound
Summary: The process of becoming more than just civil acquaintances who happen to share living space is one of learning, discovery, and smothering the urge to throw Virgil’s music out of the window. Or: there are more things in heaven and earth, Logan, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.





	Sleep When You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Set before the events of _The Sceptical Chymist_.

…

The rental house is a tiny old Victorian whose paint has faded to the pink of undercooked salmon, sitting on a plot of land that hasn’t seen so much as a garden trowel since the 1970s. This most likely means that the pipes will be fragile, the floors slightly tilted, and the civil construction code considered a newfangled and unnecessary invention of Big Government.

On the other hand, it means Logan is able to afford his own bedroom. A private one. All for himself, not for anyone else’s messes of possessions and emotions. So it evens out.

The day that Logan moves in is hot and sunny. As he walks up the three long, low steps in front of the main entrance, he sees little abstract line drawings chalked in the corners of the stairs, four potted nettles, and a large blue glass eye that’s tucked under the roof like it’s watching Logan ring the doorbell. Logan blames the heat for the staring contest he ends up waging against an inanimate object before the door is flung open inwards and an unbearably cheerful voice chirps, “Hello! I’m Patton and I’m so happy to meet you! You must be Logan!”

“Yes,” Logan says calmly.

“Wonderful! Please, come in – watch out for that rock there – “

Logan steps over the large chunk of obsidian (rainbow, judging from the sheen before the closing door cuts off the spill of sunlight from outside) placed inexplicably close to the doorjamb and sets his suitcase under the row of coathooks on the foyer wall. A fuzzy sky-blue peacoat hangs beside a fashionable, fire engine-red trenchcoat and a hooded, black velvet cloak.

“There are four bedrooms and three are already taken, but I’m happy to switch with you if you don’t like yours!” Patton is rambling as he guides Logan deeper into the antique labyrinth of a house. “That’s the kitchen, right through there, and the living room is there, and my bedroom is right next to it – unless you want to switch me, that is – and Virgil’s at the end of the hallway there, and here’s yours!”

It’s a small, rectangular box with a small, rectangular window and a ceiling that somehow manages to be vaguely trapezoidal, hearkening back to the mysteries of earlier-century architects who somehow manifested right angles on paper into three-dimensional structures with very few right angles at all.

“This is adequate, thank you,” Logan tells Patton.

“You’re welcome! Roman’s at the theater – oh, his bedroom’s upstairs under the north gable, it used to be part of the attic before the owners converted it to make more money – and Virgil’s either in his room or burying more things in the backyard, so you’ll meet them later!”

“…Right,” Logan says, and reconsiders the wisdom of opting for a twelve-month lease.

…

That same evening Logan is sitting at the flimsy desk that the previous tenant left behind in the second bedroom, writing up a post explaining very calmly and logically why Flat Earthers are as wrong as it’s humanly possible to be, when he hears the front door creak open, slam shut, and a rich voice sing out, “Boys, I’m home!”

“Dinner will be ready soon, Roman!” Patton calls back. “How was work?”

“You never work a day in your life if you do what you love!” exclaims a man who is evidently one of his new housemates, and now Logan is imagining someone white, middle-class, aggressively heteronormative, and in the habit of carrying a rolled-up yoga mat everywhere. He shudders. “Is our newest compatriot here? I must meet him!”

Logan figures he may as well get this over with. He saves his ruthlessly informative post and gets up to head into the kitchen, but when he opens his door there’s already someone standing right on the threshold.

“New bestie!” says the man-shaped hallucination of a Disney prince.  He appears to be of mixed heritage, like Logan himself, and there's no yoga mat in sight, but the rest remains to be seen. “Today was a dress rehearsal, hence the fabulous costume. You…you’re wearing a necktie,” Roman trails off.

“Observant.” _Damn it_. He can’t be making enemies of the people with whom he lives, even if actual friendship is out of the question. Logan tries again. “My name is Logan. You must be Roman.”

Roman recovers with a deep breath and sudden grin. “I am, indeed! Actor, director, artist, visionary – I do it all.”

“Pleasure,” says Logan, and he closes the door and returns to his desk. Out in the hallway he hears, “Patton, did you _see that,”_ followed by the murmur of Patton’s soothing response, and then Logan is once more focused on a matter of substance.

…

Logan somehow doesn’t meet the mysterious Virgil for three days, and when he does, it’s two in the morning. The only light is coming from the moon-shaped nightlight that Patton keeps in the hallway and the flame on a thick, black candle on the kitchen floor, surrounded by what appears to be the tarsal bones of large livestock. There’s a young man around Logan’s age kneeling beside it and leaning over the bones, muttering to himself.

“I hope you at least washed those,” Logan says tiredly, who gave up trying to understand other humans a long time ago, and the young man flails backward with a yell that makes Logan jump back. Unfortunately Logan’s wearing socks and the kitchen is tiled with baby-blue porcelain, so his feet fly up from under him at the same time his body comes down, a stray elbow catching the edge of the table hard enough to send the haphazard pile of books someone left there toppling down with him like large, heavy, sharp-edged confetti.

“WHAT ARE YOU,” the other man is shrieking nonsensically, and then the kitchen lights are flicked on, blindingly bright after the darkness of two o’clock in the morning, and Patton is standing over them crying, “Oh my goodness, are you two all right? Virgil, are you alive? Oh, oh, is anyone dead?”

Logan is lying flat on his back. “Regrettably, no,” he replies to the ceiling.

Roman’s leaning against the wall in the hallway, laughing hysterically. Patton swoops down and flutters worriedly around the other man, most likely Virgil, who is sprawled on the kitchen floor and practically hyperventilating despite having been the one crouched over dead things in the dark kitchen at _two in the goddamn morning_.

“Try counting my breaths, sweetheart,” Patton is crooning, entirely unfazed by the bones and now-extinguished candle scattered over the tiles.  A hand randomly appears in Logan’s line of sight.

“Need a hand, nerd?”

Logan weighs the balance of pride with the fact that it’s now past two o’clock in the morning and he’s lying on the cold kitchen floor. He sighs and reaches up. “Yes, thank you.”

He expects Roman to yank his arm, having far too much experience with the passive-aggressive battles of dominance that seem relatively common among individuals socialized as men, but instead Roman just pulls gently until Logan is able to sit up under his own power and then lets go without childish attempts to death-crush Logan’s hand. A pleasant surprise, and it's not even a sarcastic thought.

Patton, meanwhile, has wrapped his arms around Virgil, who wears the expression of a cat that secretly loves pettings but will maul the face of anyone who dares breathe a word about it. If cats could be in smeared eyeshadow and Doc Martens, that is.

“You must be Virgil,” Logan says, rubbing a shoulder that aches from forcibly meeting a book's hard cover. “Salutations.”

“Yeah, uh, ditto, or whatever,” Virgil mutters into Patton’s sweater vest.

…

For better or worse, Logan has now met all three of his housemates and gotten the awkward social dances out of the way. He anticipates that’s the end of it; past experience suggests that housemates lacking a preexisting bond of friendship or familial relation tend to remain on civil but ultimately superficial terms, and with Virgil appearing to be even more self-isolating than Logan himself, it’s reasonable to assume that the same will hold true in this house. Logan is absolutely fine with this.

Except…that’s not what happens.

“Dinner!” he hears Patton call out on Logan’s first Sunday night. “Hurry down before it gets cold!”

Logan’s hands pause over his laptop, curious despite himself. He’s been making his own meals the last few days, which is often the norm, but Patton does seem the type to enforce house dinners. Well, worst comes to worst and the invitation doesn’t include him, Logan will pretend he’s just getting more coffee from the kitchen and no one will be the wiser.

Turns out the invitation _does_ include Logan, but he’d forgotten about the social horror called ‘small talk.’

“So what does everyone have planned this week?” Patton asks the table, and Roman launches into a grand epic on the trials and tribulations that is finalizing everything for a show scheduled to start the following week. Logan works his way through the admittedly excellent homemade spaghetti and silently commiserates with Virgil, who’s scowling and has one arm wrapped around his plate like he’s expecting someone to steal it right from under his nose.

“How about you, Logan?” Patton asks when Roman stops for air.

“Tomorrow I will be given a tour of the cosmochemistry lab that the observatory has just finished refurbishing. I expect I will be informed of my duties in my new position there as well, with an appropriate adjustment period following that.”

Roman and Patton both blink at him. Virgil continues glaring death and gloom into his noodles.

“Dear gods, you are _such_ a nerd,” Roman says with awe.

 “Are you a cosmochemist, then? What does that mean?” Patton asks.

“I study the chemical composition of extraterrestrial matter,” Logan says, which is such a simplified summary of what he does that it’s nearly meaningless, but he’s found that laymen are rarely interested in more substantial details.

“That sounds so cool!” Patton enthuses. “I’d make more puns about it, but all the good ones _argon_.”

“Arg – oh.”

Virgil snickers.

“Well, I have no idea what you two are talking about, so it must not be nearly as important as the fact that they’re canceling my absolute favorite show – “

“Roman, be nice!”

“What?” Roman asks, honestly bewildered, which sparks Patton into explaining what it means to be considerate of others’ interests and sharing space among the members of a group, which successfully relieves Logan of the burden of participating in meaningless social phenomena.

Strangely enough, later that night after he’s in bed, Logan decides that dinner really wasn’t as torturous as it could have been (and not just because Patton knows how to make a mean dish of spaghetti).

…

“Why are there rocks everywhere?”

“Hmm?” Roman hums distractedly, not looking up from his drawing pad. He’s curled up on the couch and hard at work designing a colorful, detailed creature of mythological origin. It’s actually quite beautiful, despite being only half-finished.

“There are rocks, feathers, and other natural castoffs collected throughout the house,” Logan explains. “Why?”

“Oh, that stuff. Ask Virgil. That’s all him.”

Logan has discovered that Virgil has lived in this house the longest out of all of them, with Patton and then Roman following only a couple months before Logan himself. Virgil’s room is at the farthest end of the hallway on the first floor, probably chosen because even though it's the smallest of the bedrooms, it's the only one boasting a single door that leads directly into the overgrown backyard.

Now, Logan knocks on the inside door, taking care not to hit the tangle of leather cording, feathers, beads, and what looks like the cuspid from a large feline pinned to the front. After a long moment during which Logan wonders how Virgil can hear his own thoughts over that music, let alone a knock, the door cracks open just enough for Virgil to look at him through long purple bangs and sullenly say, “What?”

“I apologize for interrupting…whatever it is that you’re doing, but I was curious to know more about the collections of natural objects placed throughout the house. Roman informed me that they belong to you."

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward pause. The music thunders on.

“Do you collect these things?”

“Evidently.”

There’s another awkward pause. It sounds a little like the lead singer is being tortured by a very detail-oriented villain with a medical background.

“If you prefer not to share personal details about them, you need only say so and I will not mention the subject again. Otherwise I will continue asking questions and prolong this awkwardness until my curiosity is satisfied.”

Strangely, Virgil smiles a little. “Is that your ultimatum here?”

Logan considers that for a moment. “Yes.”

Virgil tilts his head and stares at Logan with surprisingly sharp eyes before he arches an eyebrow and opens the door wide enough for him to slouch against the doorjamb and cross his arms. In his torn skinny jeans and holey socks, Virgil is the nightmare of every suburban parent ever.

“Well,” he starts in a tone edged with challenge and a bit of a sneer, “depending on the object in question, it either keeps the good shit inside, the bad shit outside, or serves as a way for one of my spirits to get a toehold in the physical realm so they can do their job.”

 _I’m living with a religious nut_ , is Logan’s first thought, which he immediately dismisses as both judgmental and unhelpful. “I see. While I don’t personally share those beliefs, I can at least appreciate the aesthetic. The rainbow obsidian by the front door is a particularly attractive specimen, although I question the wisdom of having it so close to foot traffic.”

Virgil is staring at him again, but the sneer has disappeared. Logan shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Did I say something to offend you?”

“Uh, no,” Virgil mutters, running a hand through his hair. “No, you didn’t, actually.”

“Aah. Good.”

The moment of awkward silence returns.

“I could probably find another place for that obsidian,” Virgil offers.

“I imagine it wouldn’t need to be moved completely. Would it be as, ah, effective in its spiritual purpose if it were to be placed in the window beside the front door instead?”

“Probably,” Virgil says slowly.

“That is satisfactory,” Logan says with a nod. “Thank you for answering my questions.”

“Um, you’re welcome?”

At the next group dinner (“ _Family_ dinner, Logan!” Patton corrects him with such huge, sad eyes that Logan never forgets again), Virgil sits next to Logan. Neither of them says anything, but Logan finds it…surprisingly satisfactory.

…

On the opening night of Roman’s current show, Logan catches Roman standing at the bathroom sink holding something like a fancy necklace in a white-knuckled grip and whispering to himself. Logan doesn’t actually mean to overhear – the door had simply been left open to the hallway – but when Roman finishes with a clear, “Khaire Ápollon,” Logan can’t help stopping and asking, “Was that Greek?”

“Dear _Godmother_ , Logan!” Roman yells, “Warn a guy before sneaking up on him!”

“Apologies. The door was open and I couldn’t help overhearing a little. Was that Greek?”

“Overhearing – um. Yes. Yes, that was Greek.” Roman seems unusually flustered. Logan can’t imagine why, considering Roman is still fully dressed and wasn’t doing anything that would obviously violate social norms. His makeup is much heavier than usual, including some kind of lipstick that reminds Logan of Mars’ more intense colorization, but to Logan’s admittedly very amateur eye it’s all well done and nothing to be ashamed of, especially for an impending theater performance.

“Fascinating. Have you studied the Classics?”

“Uh, yes! Yes, that’s exactly it. Well, I was a theater major, of course, but everyone knows it’s essentially impossible to excel in theater without having a decent grounding in the Classical tradition.”

Logan adjusts his glasses. “Yes, that sounds like a natural connection, considering the significant cultural role that theater once played throughout Greece’s historical eras. I have a passing familiarity with the various Roman and Greek mythologies myself, given how popular they are for scientists naming their discoveries. Did you know that the highest peak on Mars has been named Mons Olympus?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s…that’s actually really interesting.”

“Indeed. It may sound unscientific of me to many, but I think there’s a kind of beauty in the power of fiction to inspire human minds into new modes of creative thinking.”

“Right,” Roman says faintly, and Logan frowns.

“Are you all right? I apologize for disrupting your preparation for tonight.”

“Yes, I’m fine. Just, uh, pre-show nerves, as ridiculous as that sounds for a performing artist such as myself!”

That sounds a little more heavy-handed than Roman’s usual bravado, but Logan knows that their current relationship doesn’t have the acceptable emotional depth that would allow him to press for answers. So he nods in response, wishes Roman a fractured femur for the night, and heads back to his room.

Early the next morning before work, Logan goes to the kitchen for coffee and finds Roman poured into a limp puddle on the living room sofa, makeup smeared and costume wrinkled. Roman cracks open a bleary eye when Logan passes, and Logan says quietly, without really knowing why, “’Khaire Ápollon,’ perhaps?”

He’s seen Roman wear all kinds of smiles, smirks, and grins, but the smile that Roman shares now is new and exhausted and painfully, honestly _happy_. “’Khaire Ápollon,’ indeed.”

…

Logan may not be especially deft with emotions, but he is _excellent_ at recognizing patterns, and he’s noticed that Patton has an inexplicable but undeniable behavioral pattern.

Not long after Logan moves in, Virgil apparently has a bad day. Logan thinks “apparently” because he personally sees no difference: Virgil is rarely communicative and spends most of his time in his bedroom anyway. Patton, however, is in the middle of baking brownies when Logan comes home one day from the lab. He explains, “They’re for Virgil, the poor thing is having a rough time of it with his anxiety,” and soon takes a plate of warm brownies and a mug of mint tea to Virgil’s bedroom, where he remains for a good couple of hours. The next time Logan sees them, Patton is as cheerful as ever and Virgil is relaxed enough to not only have his headphones off but to have left them back in his room. It's the best evidence for miracles that Logan has ever seen, really.

Another day, Logan is sitting at the kitchen table with Patton and going over shared house bills when Patton, apropos of nothing and still carrying on the conversation, gets up and turns on the stovetop. He fills a pot with milk and adds both hot chocolate mix and real chocolate chips when the milk warms up enough.

“Why are you making hot chocolate?” Logan asks, bewildered, and Patton just shrugs and says with an absent smile, “You never know when someone might need it.”

That ‘someone’ turns out to be Roman, who storms into the house about five minutes later, throws his bookbag onto the floor, and goes straight into a long narrative on how utterly _infuriating_ and _unfair_ the theater director is being, this is why _Roman_ should have been hired for the position. When Logan reasonably points out that Roman wouldn’t be lead actor if he’s the director and Roman is about to throw something at him, Patton pops up between them and somehow shepherds Roman into the living room with two cups of hot chocolate in hand. Later that night, Roman is still a little sulky but is otherwise pleasant company.

Then there’s a day when a crucial piece of machinery in the lab malfunctions and Logan is the one walking around the house, ready to spit nails.

“There is a difference between human error and _stupidity_ ,” he growls.

“What happened?” Patton asks, steering them both into Logan’s bedroom and sitting on the edge of the bed. Logan explains how things went terribly wrong in the process of a delicate experimental procedure, that three weeks’ worth of data is now invalidated, that it will take another week for replacement parts to arrive so the requisite machinery can be repaired, that he and his team will need to pull overtime to make up for such a severe delay and avoid losing one of their key grants.

Patton doesn’t try to touch Logan, doesn’t say anything except the occasional, “Oh, wow,” and, “Yeah, that sounds frustrating,” and by the time Logan winds down, Logan feels like all the tension in his body has been scooped out and he’s simply empty and tired. Patton finally reaches out to him, waiting until Logan nods, and then guides Logan into his own bed with his hands on Logan’s shoulders.

“How are you feeling?”

“I _despise_ feeling,” Logan grumps into his pillow.

Patton looks a bit sad. “I can see that. Think you can get some sleep?”

 _“Yes,”_ Logan huffs, body already heavy – he always forgets how exhausting it is to have so many emotions all at once – and he doesn’t realize he’s asleep until he’s waking up the next morning, sunlight already spilling warm through the window and over his star-studded comforter. Uncharacteristically he stays in bed for a while, curled on his side under the weighted blanket and watching the light slowly shift the shadows in his room.

These incidents don’t happen all the time, but they occur often enough that Logan tracks down Patton (in the living room, doing something arcane with felt and thread) when Virgil and Roman aren’t around and demands, “How do you know when someone is feeling poorly, sometimes before you’ve even seen them?”

Patton blinks in surprise, then shrugs. “Just a hunch, I guess. It’s my job to take care of everyone!”

“Why?”

The ever-present smile on Patton’s face dims a bit. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“We are all adults unrelated by blood or marriage. None of us are romantic or sexual partners, and you’ve only known me for six weeks. Why must it be your job to take care of us?”

“Well, shucks, why not? It makes me happy when all of you are happy too.”

“There are three of us and one of you, and you are the one who has demonstrated the greatest amount of awareness of the others’ emotional well-being.” Logan adds softly, “Isn’t it…exhausting?”

The smile slides off Patton’s face and he turns back to the project in his hands. “I’m all right, Logan, you don’t need to worry about me. I’m happy with the way things are.”

Logan observes the way Patton avoids his gaze by fixating on his project and wonders, _When was the last time anyone thought to worry about you?_ But judging from Patton’s body language, it’s a subject best set aside for the moment.

“How do you know that one of us is feeling poorly, anyway? Sometimes before the person in question recognizes it for himself?”

“I suppose that’s just the magic of friendship,” Patton says in a way that clearly means he’s referencing something for very specific reasons, but Logan can admit that he’s too terrified of the answer to ask.

…

Logan wakes up in the middle of the night for no reason that he can discern. He stares up into the pitch darkness, willing himself to fall back asleep, until he hears a hushed argument pick up just outside the window he’d left cracked open for a nice breeze. He sits up with a sigh, peers out, and finds Roman and Virgil standing close together under a moonless sky full of stars, their bodies faintly lit by the small lantern Virgil’s holding.

“You don’t even _like_ the gods – “

“Dude, don’t say that _out loud_ , are you _trying_ to make me look like a blasphemer on tonight of all nights – “

“I’m just saying, I should be the one to hold the lantern – “

“ _You_ don’t like the dead, remember, and have you forgotten what the point of this whole thing even is – “

“Oh, so now you’re trying to turn the dead against me? Conspiracy!”

“The only conspiracy here is how you somehow managed to gain the favor of _anyone_ , let alone some of the Theoi – “

“How _dare_ you – “

“I’m just saying, I’m the one who knows the dead best, so I should be the one to carry the lantern, or do you have even have the first clue on how to protect everyone if one of these spirits flips out – “

“You’re such a _necromancer!”_

“What does that even _mean_ – “

Logan shoves up the window and hisses through the screen, “If you two don’t come to a resolution in five seconds, I will make the resolution _for_ you so that reasonable people can sleep the proper amount before a full work day.”

Virgil hisses in surprise. Roman lets out a tiny, high-pitched shriek.

“Sorry,” Virgil mumbles, and grabs Roman by the arm to drag him out of sight around the corner of the house.

Logan closes the window, flumps back down, and thinks, _Religion is for people who hate sleep_.

…

After three months of living in the house, Logan feels he has a good understanding of the people with whom he’s sharing a residence. They’re all messy and inefficient in their own individual, myriad ways, but barring the occasional late-night surprise Logan’s own routine remains largely unaffected, so he lets it go. He figures it’s none of his business as long as the others are happy with their messes and no one is getting hurt, and anyway, his lab has received a new specimen recently uncovered from an expedition in Antarctica that appears to be millions of years old and cosmic in origin, so he has much more interesting matters to examine.

Then their home gets invaded.

…

Logan jumps and bangs his knees into the underside of his desk when he hears screaming. It takes two seconds to realize it’s _Patton_ screaming, and before he’s aware of what’s going on Logan is shoving himself back from his desk and flying down the hallway while yelling, “Patton? Patton!”

He’s vaguely aware that Virgil is close on his heels as he bursts into the kitchen. “Patton, are you all right?”

“SPIDER,” Patton screams, curled into a ball on top of the kitchen table, unrolling himself just enough to wave a limb in the general direction of the cupboards. From elsewhere in the house comes the clatter of Roman half-running, half-falling down the attic stairs.

“A spider?” Logan echoes, bemused, looking at the brown Florida wolf spider clinging to the front of a cupboard under the counter.

“CREEPY-CRAWLY DEATH DEALER,” Patton yells. “SPAWN OF THE UNDERWORLD HOSTS. EATER OF HOBBIT FLESH.”

“ _Dude_ , too dark,” Virgil protests from behind Logan’s shoulder.

“Where is the beast?” Roman hollers, sliding into the kitchen on socked feet, “I shall slay it!”

“IT _WATCHES_.”

“Patton,” Logan sighs, but then Virgil and Roman _both_ scream, which sets off Patton again. The wolf spider is…no longer on the front of the cupboard, and Logan belatedly remembers that the _Hogna georgicola_ , like other species of wolf spider, can move very quickly, which means –

“ _Oh my gods there it is_ – “

“IT HUNGERS – “

Virgil’s arm clamps down over Logan’s shoulder and across his chest, hauling him to the side so Virgil can bodily force himself in front and yell in a language that Logan doesn’t immediately recognize, and suddenly the brown spot that was flashing across the pastel-blue kitchen tile is growing larger and slower until –

Until a tiny brown kitten tumbles to a stop under one of the chairs and starts mewing in distress.

“Oh wow!” Patton cries, clasping his hands together in a mood shift that’s giving Logan emotional whiplash.

“Oh _my,”_ Roman gasps.

“Oh shit,” Virgil squawks.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Logan breathes, watching as the kitten totters up onto its four, no, six, no, _eight fucking legs_.

“…Oops?” Virgil whispers, almost drowned out by Patton squealing and sliding off the table onto the floor so he can cuddle the spider-turned-kitten, which is still mewing in confused distress. Logan can relate on a soul-deep level right now.

“What. How.”

Virgil pulls back his arm, and somehow pulls back all of himself, really, drawing his hood down low over his face and his sleeves over his hands and doing his human best ( _is_ he human? What is real anymore?) to disappear into the background.

“Logan, there’s something we’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Roman declares, shooting for confidence and failing halfway there.

“Did you know about this?” Logan demands from Patton, who replies into the kitten’s thick fluff, “Nope, not at all, but I kinda suspected.”

“You...suspected. You suspected _this?"_

“Magic,” Patton provides, as though this doesn’t call into question every fundamental understanding he has of the universe.

“Are you Harry Potter?” Logan asks Virgil. He pretends his voice hasn’t gone a bit shrill.

“Don’t be silly, Logan, Siouxsie over there isn’t Harry Potter,” Roman laughs nervously.

“Don’t be…” Logan stops. “I am going upstairs to prepare for work, in a world-renowned scientific lab, where matter does not transubstantiate and ignore Newtonian physics of conservation. Good day, gentlemen.”

He turns on his heel and leaves, and as he walks away he hears Roman say, “Well, that could’ve gone worse, right?”

…

Virgil is very obviously avoiding him; even trying to visit him in his room proves fruitless, and Logan honestly starts to wonder if Virgil is using _magical means_ of avoidance. Patton claims not to know anything and Roman claims that he’s not a magic-user, thank you very much, of which there are apparently many different kinds (WHAT WORLD EVEN IS THIS), but that he prefers to put his faith in _deities_ , of all things, because why bother with the finicky details when you can trust in your guiding powers instead to bring beautiful blessings and glorious inspiration, and at that point Logan walks away to preserve the last of his sanity.

Eventually Logan resorts to sitting at the kitchen table, in the dark, at two in the morning again, because he had no idea that signing the rental lease would be the equivalent of signing away in blood any pretense of remaining a reasonable person who values such necessities as sleep. The eight-legged kitten is perched on his shoulder. His patience is soon rewarded by the susurrus of bare feet shuffling over the hallway’s old carpet.

“Hello, Virgil.”

Virgil lets out a ‘meep’ and a strange word that has purple flames spontaneously lighting up over his outstretched palm. He looks like this is only one late night in a very long series of late nights. “Are you going to kill me?”

“What? No, of course not,” Logan frowns, momentarily distracted. “Why would you think that?”

“You’re sitting in the dark at two AM at the kitchen table, waiting for me with your hands folded and a cat on your shoulder like a Bond villain.”

Fair point. “It’s a cat with eight legs, however, which has never been a feature of any Bond film.”

“Considering the circumstances, that only makes it more likely that you’re here to dispose of my lifeless corpse.”

“A corpse, by definition, is already lifeless,” Logan can’t help pointing out, to which Virgil, whose face is lit by eerily shifting violet light, ominously says, “Usually.”

“Setting aside the disturbing implications of that, I simply wish to speak with you. Everything I think I know is now in question, and whenever I begin to question what I witnessed as some kind of delirium, this creature is undeniable evidence to the contrary.” He lifts the kitten from his shoulder and sets it on the table, where it mews unhappily. Virgil inches closer to the table, eyeing the fluffy kitten like a timid woodland prey creature expecting a trap. “I am a scientist, and it is my duty to set aside my subjective biases as much as possible to understand the world for how it is and not for what I wish it to be out of personal convenience.”

Virgil slides into the chair at the far end of the table and snaps his fingers, which turns the purple flames into a small ball of light that hovers unmoored over the table. Logan itches for an optical spectrometer and reminds himself to be patient, watching Virgil reach over and pick up the kitten to cuddle it in his lap. Virgil pets it for a few minutes of silence.

“Okay,” he finally says, and for the first time in a long time, Logan feels the excitement of inquiry and discovery, of the sheer breadth of possibility opening up before him in a universe that is far stranger and more infinite than Logan had dared to dream.

_“Excellent.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Virgil and Roman are trying (and failing) to do a [deipnon](http://baringtheaegis.blogspot.com/2012/11/deipnon-noumenia-and-agathos-daimon.html).


End file.
